Out-of-place artifacts that seem too advanced for their time, such as the Antikythera mechanism and the crystal skulls, with what modern research has revealed about them.
Entries: 24
More than 10,000 engraved stones collected by the doctor Javier Cabrera in Ica, Peru. They show dinosaurs and humans together and surgery like heart transplants, and were hailed as "evidence of a super-ancient civilization." The farmer who sold the stones confessed that he carved them himself.
Rock crystal carved into the shape of a human skull. Presented as relics of the ancient Maya or Aztecs, they inspired legends such as "when thirteen are gathered, humanity's secrets will be revealed." Studies by the British Museum and others found marks of modern tools, and they are now thought to date from the 19th century or later.
A fossil found in Utah in 1968 that looks like a sandal footprint stepping on a trilobite. Because it came from Cambrian rock about 500 million years old, it was hailed as evidence overturning human history, but it is thought to be a mark left by a natural break in the rock.
Short for "out-of-place artifacts": objects said to be impossible to make with the technology of the time and place where they were found. The Antikythera mechanism and the crystal skulls are famous, but most have since been explained by research.
